So Many Things to Do

16-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:

Thursday, July 27, 1911: Went with Ruthie up to Oakes. Ruth and Rachel are having such an awful time a planning to go so many places almost at once. Ruth expects to go to the picnic, but I don’t think I will.

Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:

Ruth Muffly

Grandma also mentioned the upcoming picnic in the previous day’s diary entry and that she probably won’t go because “something unforeseen intervened.”

This entry suggests that Grandma could go if she chose to do so. Yesterday I’d thought that perhaps she’d been grounded by her parents.

Now I think that she is upset about something and just doesn’t want to go. Did she discover that some guy that she thought was cute was going with another girl? . . .or . . .

Rachel Oakes

It sounds like Grandma’s sister Ruth and her friend Rachel Oakes are involved in lots of things. I wonder what the dilemmas were—Were several events occurring at the same time? . . .Were they trying to figure out who would (and who would not) be at various events . ..Or guessing which events the cool guys would be at? . . . Or were they trying to figure out what to wear or which foods to take? . . . Or maybe Ruth and Rachel didn’t want a younger sister tagging along to the picnic—Grandma was 16; Ruth was 18 or 19— and said something nasty.

Whew, there can be so many considerations when one is a teen. . . (In other words, some things never change.)